Nile Marker

To the Editors:

In reading the article "The Artificial Nile" by Scott
Nixon (March–April), my attention was drawn to the statement
about the design and construction of the Aswan High Dam by the
Russian Zuk Hydroproject Institute. This is a true statement, of
course. However, design of a replacement for the old dam was first
undertaken beginning in 1954 by an international board on which my
mentor, Lorenz G. Straub, served. Straub undertook to find a means
to bypass some of the sediment around the dam both to prevent the
reservoir from filling with sediment too rapidly and to prevent the
bed and banks of the Nile from being eroded by otherwise
sediment-free water. (Ideally, the sediment would have been carried
downstream by floodwaters, which would spread nutrients over the
riverbanks—probably an impossible task.) Straub was preparing
to conduct physical model studies at the St. Anthony Falls Hydraulic
Laboratory at the University of Minnesota; file boxes full of
records and rolls of maps are still in storage at the laboratory.
However, political events in the late 1950s caused Western nations
to fall out of favor with Egypt. Straub's last trip to Cairo was in
1959. I am not knowledgeable about what the Russian designers did
with the sediment problem, if anything.